


Factum fieri infectum non potest

by Ursa_99



Category: The 100 (TV), The 100 Series - Kass Morgan
Genre: Attempt at angst, Clarke not taking shit from anyone anymore, Not Canon Compliant, That's it, Was from when I had no idea what season 6 would be like, forgot i had this in my folder, like a second of bellarke
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-29
Updated: 2019-04-29
Packaged: 2020-02-09 20:58:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18645985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ursa_99/pseuds/Ursa_99
Summary: It's impossible for a deed to be undone





	Factum fieri infectum non potest

She sat against the cool metal controls, back against the screens that filled the wall to ceiling behind her, her arms crossed as she mulled over the tech clasped in her left hand. The giant wall behind her was fractured into dozens of monitors that held every angle of the horrid war that was once again revenging around them.

They were supposed to be _better_.

They deserved peace, at least that’s what she thought at one time, but just like letting hope blinding her to the reality of everything, believing Spacekru would return and they’d live together in the valley, believing the flame died in Praimfaya, or that Wonkru would want peace after the hells of the bunker they’ve endured for six years…she let her guard down paying too high a price.

She felt the stickiness of blood clotting between her fingers, dark as the sins of her species yet with a gleam that put the two suns to shame.

Jasper _was_ right.

_They_ were the problem.

“Clarke”

She slowly raised her eyes to find the desperate faces around her, blood stained each and every one of them, even Jordan was covered in the life liquid.

They’ve failed.

They’ve failed Monty and Harper.

They’ve failed each other.

They’ve failed themselves.

She stared down the man who she was once able to trust, the man who helped keep her alive in the hellscape that was Earth after the first apocalypse when they were but kids sent down to die.

He was but a fragment of what he once was, but they wall were.

And she, she was but a speck of a fragment of what she once was.

“Clarke?”

She blinked, refocusing on the downcast eyes of everyone in the room. All they did was stand there and ask, demand, plead, and damn.

She didn’t say anything.

“We’re looking to you princess”

She almost flinched at the old nickname, oh, how she wished they could go back to simpler times where the only thing trying to kill them was the wildlife and grounders. When they could _understand_ each other, or at least the pain.

“No” Her voice didn’t even sound like her own, it was hollow, cold, and unforgiving…or maybe that’s how it always was and she could hear it how everyone else did now; but the more she thought about it the more she didn’t give a damn anymore. They could play hero as much as they want, but they’re only lying to themselves.

A particularly loud screech of mortar fire reverberated through the speakers before reds, whites, and blacks overtook the screens. It wasn’t seconds later till the tunnels they were in quaked with the blasts. Little bits of debris fell like snow around them. It looked to much like the ash after Praimfaya.

This was on them this time, not her.

Watching their hopeless heads shoot up didn’t bring a wave of fear for them, or guilt or grief or regret. She was no longer willing to give everything for them, she had _nothing_ to give them; they’ve had their chances and they’ve made their choices _. Plenty_ of them.

She maybe a hypocrite, but they’re liars _and_ hypocrites.

If they want to move forward like this then it’s on their conscious, no longer will she take the blame for them, she was not the sole participator in the events of here or Earth. If they want to continue the cycle, the one they’ve restarted, then it’s their choice.

Bellamy gaped at her, confusion clouding his features. Raven, Murphy, Echo, Emori had their own fair share of shock clouding their visages. Jordan just looked scared and sad, her heart had a spark of hurt, just for the boy, but she quickly squashed it, Diyoza would care for him.

“I—what? I don’t understand”

Bellamy was standing on the other side of the room with his space family, a sole console separating her from them, it was dead center in the room, a lever so harmless in appearance but devastating if flipped sat atop its podium.

It always seemed to end with levers and her.

Such a simple item for a complicated equation.

She shrugged at the man, arms still crossed but the tech in her hand was closer to her ear, she could have sworn she could hear all the screams and whispers from the memories inside.

“What do you want from me Bellamy, to pull _another_ lever? To restart the cycle over again, the one Monty and Harper _died_ to stop? The same one _you_ restarted”

The cool in her voice quickly went to a simmer before shooting to a boil. The people she once thought of as friends, as family, didn’t seem to learn from their own mistakes, hell maybe they didn’t think they ever made any. _She_ might have been like that once, but at least she admitted it; she was never the hero but now neither were they.

“What are you asking me to do!”

In her growing anger the man who was more shadow then memory had stepped closer to the lever, he was glaring between it and her; but under the anger there was an underlined panic slowly drowning him.

“I want you to help me” He pleaded, “Together, like we promised, this isn’t on us—”

“It’s on _everyone_!”

She continued to rub the small jewel of consciousness in her hand. Over and under then flip, under over, then flip, turn, repeat. Restart.

“Clarke, we done this before!” he bellowed.

She quieted again, a soothing calmness that masked a tempest of a thousand years. She almost laughed as Bellamy took a step back from her.

“Only when there was something worth it”

It was as if she slapped him all over again and abandoned him to die in a whole in the ground…maybe she was doing it again, only this time there was no remorse. Nothing chewing at her soul to make her second guess herself.

“Clarke, our people—”

“ _Your_ people couldn’t wait five god damn months to get their own place, so you started encroaching onto others’ land, people that you knew nothing of. There was a war waiting to ravage this planet and you opened the damn flood gate. _This—_ ”

She pointed to the screens behind her, she could feel the black blood dripping down her arm. Some may have flung off and hit the screens behind her.

Dozens and dozens of images of the live footage scrolling past, there were men, women, and children blown away or crushed under the rubble. Cries of the dying screamed, yelled, and roared through the speakers.

“—is on _you_. Now you stand before me, after you obliterated _my_ second valley, _after_ I gave you one for Wonkru _and_ one for Eligius. That’s three, three chances of peace. I’ve done my part, more than enough, and now you stand before me to what, beg for help? Help how, Bellamy? Pulling another lever”

Bellamy couldn’t—wouldn’t—meet her eyes.

“I’m not your escape goat anymore, I’m not your pariah, I’m not going to make these type of decisions anymore. Not when I know no one else will understand”

“We do understand!” It was Raven.

“Do you” she questioned back, “Do you really? How bout I make you a _list_ of all the reasons why I shouldn’t do a damn thing for you, how many things you’ve all asked but never returned”

The woman who she once considered a sister frowned as if she didn’t understand and then like a light switch realization ran through her.

“That’s not what we’re asking”

“Then what _are_ you asking” She challenged the mechanic. “Because this looks like choosing who lives and who dies, and I _know_ you all think it’s my specialty and maybe it is, but I detest it every time”

“We—” Raven trailed off looking at the lever between them.

None of them could say they weren’t asking her to pull the lever. She leaned closer to the screens, she couldn’t feel the warmth of the monitor, “Why don’t one of _you_ pull the lever this time”

It was casual as if she didn’t just ask them to destroy the lives of hundreds before them.

“But—”

“ _No_ , Raven, it doesn’t matter if I have the most experience slaughtering people in the name of saving my own, that’s the same thing that happened on Earth. Then you asked for the one person I had left to throw down everything for a group of people unwilling to choose words over war. To accept the flame which none of you know a damn thing about, gone was her peace of mind and trust to others, gone was her childhood and the stories of heroes...So,”

Clarke moved her unoccupied hand over, pressing one of the thousands of buttons at her side, the left wall seemed to jumped alive with more screams and images of devastation. They were standing in the brain center of this civilization, all the people under the watch of their own and none of them knew or they didn’t care…maybe that’s why they were so happy.

“You can choose how this world dies, but I will not be your cannon fodder to light, to burn when you want to blame something for your indecision or a blind filled passion”

Raven shook her head, glaring at her, seemingly wanting to argue but moved to the lever instead, arm shooting out ready to pull the piece of metal that would damn who knows how many.

But she couldn’t, Clarke heard whispers from Murphy’s drunken stupors about Raven being unable to kill the prisoners. How it should have been done because it was _her_ way, and that’s how they survive…When the mechanic didn’t pull the lever she turned her eyes to Murphy as Raven slinked back, always the one to prove himself whether he wanted to admit it or not.

“Your turn” she stared down the one who was her fellow cockroach and the closes thing she had to a brother at one time. They were neither of those to each other now.

The man stared back in challenge, looking at her all the while as he slowly started bringing the piece of metal towards himself, ready to extinguish dozens of lives, but a violent crash of debris in the video drew his attention away. Those monitors hissed as their footage cut off. Clarke didn’t have to turn around to hear the death of many from the other functioning screens, hell she didn’t have to be there to smell the burning skin or taste the ash, her memory was photographic of all these details.

Great for medical detail, horrible for a soul trying to stay together.

He didn’t pull the lever even halfway till he shoved it back to the original position, the lever waiting for its next knight like Excalibur.

Clarke turned to the Azgeda spy, “How about you, Echo. You’ve obliterated the same mountain I have with just as much innocence in it as I did. If I recall the only survivors were Raven and Sinclair”

To her surprise Echo looked away from her, so she wasn’t the only one trying to move on from their past. Good for her.

“It’s hard isn’t it, to have lost your humanity or shove it so far down to do a job to your people, for your people, but then you got it back and you’re holding onto it with a death grip and not one look at you is to see if your _holding together_ but instead to see what you can do _next_ ”

“I’ve always had my humanity _Wanheda_ , it’s you who’s never had it”

Clarke almost laughed, “Careful Echo, your arrogance is showing…you should tell that to Roan, he’s the only other one besides Lexa and I who’ve know the true cost of leadership, and Octavia” she added.

Echo whipped her head around finally meeting her eyes with a fire that could almost rival the death wave. The spy had her sword out ready to lunge at her but a hand stopped her.

Bellamy who was quiet up till this point was watching her like she was a horrid monster, and she is one, she always was.

“ _I_ know, Clarke”

“Do you”

“Yes!” he yelled, his voice whined light the generator beneath their floor.

She stared at him with no life in her eyes, no sympathy just cold hard fact.

“What of Lincoln and the rest of the grounders I begged Lexa to send to protect Skaikru. They were slaughtered in their sleep by Pike after you backed him from behind, after you egged him into possition”

He looked ready to protest but she didn’t let him get another word in edge wise.

“You were mad and hurt and confused, but those deaths were preventable and there was another way. You deceived me into believing I could trust you and _you_ chained me in the heart of Arkadia, leaving me. Just like you did in Polis. Between you and I, Bellamy, I _am_ the monster and the hypocrite but I am no liar, not like you. So, you can damn me, kill me, and drag me through the dirt, kick me when I’m down and throw me into hell, but know this—”

Clarke set off the other walls of the room with several flicks of her wrist, even the floor and the ceiling, image and video of the world falling around them engulfed their senses. She heard someone gag but ignored it.

“It’s better to be a monster with no head than a human with no heart”

Bellamy held himself over the lever staring at her with emotions flowing by too fast to label, but the tears he started to spend didn’t affect her. None of theirs did.

“Clarke, please, I can’t do this without you. You and I have always done this together”

“Together” she laughed, a cruel undercurrent carrying her words,

“Last time you told me that was when you left me chained to a wall pleading at you to keep Maddi safe, to not put the flame in her head, to release me so we could find another way, _together_ ”

“She agreed” he shouted back, hand quivering on the lever.

“When the person you lived with for _six_ years on an apoplectic world is threatened with death, you’re going to do whatever it takes till you think they’re safe”

“She was doing it to stop the war”

“No, she did it so I didn’t die. Did you even know what it did to her? It striped her of her identity put nightmares in her head till she woke up screaming. Did you not learn anything from when I took the flame? Do you not remember the blood I’d spit out from my dreams? What of when a hundred kids futures were damned for the betterment of the whole”

“You _left_ me!”

“You _betrayed and left_ me first!”

Though her voice was raising Clarke couldn’t feel any tears, nor the feeling of her chest constricting with emotion, either she cried her last drop with Maddi, or she was truly broken.

Maybe it was both.

Bellamy took his hand off the metal putting it with his other to balance himself over the console, tears fell down his face tearing away at the dirt and grime that accumulated with the bloodshed.

Echo moved behind him, offering a reassuring hand that proved useless in the wake of the smoldering bridges burning before her.

“Heda will decide what to do when she arrives with Shaw and Diyoza”

Echo looked to the woman expecting some violent reaction of her daughter being brought into the cross fire again, but Clarke only sat back against the edge of the computer consoles from being worked up by the screaming match with Bellamy.

Clarke engaged the spy’s challenge with a cool calm voice.

“She can’t”

“You have no say in the matter, if Heda wants to march on these people till they are all dead, then we will march”

“Factum fieri infectum non potest”

The spy frowned at her, the rest of Spacekru looking just as lost, except for Bellamy who was finally looking at the piece of tech tearing into the palm of her hand with each pass between her fingers. It seems he finally noticed she was bleeding for the first time, maybe it’s the first time he ever thought she could bleed.

“What the hell does that me—”

Bellamy cut off Murphy, “Clarke, what’s in your hand”

The thundering footsteps down the hall had nothing to do with the blood pounding in his ears, heart promising to tear apart if what was in Clarke’s hand was what he thought it was.

The blonde looked at him as the thing she was playing with slid back and forth between her fingers near her head, he hadn’t seen it for the shadows but with all the light from the screens he could see her blood dripping down her arm and onto the floor.

The others must have noticed because the angry grumblings ceased.

Shaw and Diyoza stormed through the room out of breath but ready to fight, startling the rest in the room except for Clarke. It was always Clarke who was ten steps ahead of everyone. Bellamy watched Diyoza and Clarke had their own conversations in their head away from the rest of them, no voice and no sound but a thousand words seemed to pass between the two. Then a nod from the elder soldier,

“She is with your mother now, Clarke”

“Thank you, twelve minutes Diyoza”

There was a silent nod from the two Eligius soldier who quickly turned towards the door, it was then they saw the heavy packs on their backs. Raven tried to ask Shaw what was happening, but the man shook his head with a quiet “you’ll see”

Once the two left Clarke held the piece of tech up between her finger and thumb, the little object that has caused so much heartache and war, so much sorrow and madness, glinted like the stars she used to sleep under. The flame was shattered across the top with cracks webbing the rest of it, the bullet not having hitting dead center.

She drew her eyes back down to the man clutching against the lever console for support.

“You know what it is”

He was shaking his head in disbelief, “Clarke, what _happened_ ”

“What always happens to Commanders…the flame was overtaking her conscious Bellamy, what do you think Maddi would have done? She killed her grandmother for trying to resuscitate one of Wonkru’s ‘enemies’ in cold blood and half a dozen civilian children. It wasn’t the first time and it was slowly eating away at her but no one would hear it, would see it. Or if they did, they ignored it”

Clarke slinked forward till she was kneeling with the crumpled man on the floor, accenting every word.

“Maddi bore it so they didn’t have to” when Bellamy didn’t say anything she continued on. “It only takes a moment of madness, but she swiped my gun that you took from me when you left me tied up _again_ and put the barrel to her throat, because and I quote from the daughter that died after I had to rip my arms to shreds to get out, ‘If I die, I die a Griffin of heart and mind not as a monster in this twilight’…I told you, you wouldn’t understand what you’ve done, and it seems that you’ve only learn by death in the one hundred thirty one years I’ve known you”

The man in front of her who was once her everything, cried be it for the loss of her child or the guilt of her death.

It didn’t matter to her, not anymore.

She pushed off her knees sliding over the floor towards the door, ignoring and slipping past the pleads and grasping hands of the man on the floor, as easily as the ghosts that still haunt her mind. Stopping at the threshold of the door she gave a final piece of advice.

“You have roughly five minutes till Diyoza’s bombs are active, twelve to get out of the blast radius, if you want to flip that lever you need to do it soon. Every second counts”

She left with no goodbye or the promise of another hello.


End file.
